the disappointment of being unable
to catch wind currents in your arms.

Together we chanted the syllables, as if
each vowel could bear the weight of the living.

Photo of Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox, which won the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and Last Train to the Midnight Market (2013), and has received poetry fellowships from Kundiman and the Knight Foundation, among others. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2015, Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art, Southern Humanities Review and more. She serves as co-founder and managing editor for Print-Oriented Bastardsand producer for The Working Poet Radio Show.